There have been few
more contentious issues than whether there is an in-built state of
conflict between science and religion. Ever since the fifth century
BCE when Anaxagoras was exiled from Athens for expounding ideas
thought to be blasphemous, there has been a dissonance between what
people thinking scientifically and people thinking religiously have
said about the world. The idea of a conflict between science and
religion is relatively recent, however. It first emerged as a serious
proposition in the 1860s and 1870s as a result of the disputes then
raging between supporters of Darwinism who were, in most cases,
secularists or freethinkers, and opponents who, in most cases, were
adherents of traditional Christianity. The idea of the conflict first
came to public attention in Germany in the 1840s. At this time
radical theologians like David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer were
rapidly coming to the conclusion that the idea of a reconciliation
between Hegelianism and Christianity was an illusion. Strauss’s
book The Christian Faith in Its Historical Development and Battle
with Modern Science (1840-1) was a drastic criticism of Christian
dogma. The English-speaking world had to wait for History of the
Conflict between Science and Religion (1873) by J. W. Draper, and
the much better History of the Warfare of Science with Theology
(1876) by Andrew Dickson White. For many decades it was pretty much
taken for granted that there was indeed a conflict between science
and religion, more or less as Strauss, Draper and White had conceived
it. But the idea of a permanent and inevitable conflict was never
unanimously held, and over the past thirty years it has been
subjected to evermore serious criticism. Recent scholarship has
discerned three main schools of thought with respect to the
relationship between science and religion. They have been described
in terms of compartments, complementarity and conflict.

Science and
Religion: Separate Compartments?

Let us start with the weakest argument first. The compartments model has had some
influential advocates. For many years they were almost invariably
churchmen or religious-motivated scholars, anxious to maintain a
no-man’s land between their faith and what science was saying
about it. The most notable recent apologist for the compartments
thesis, however, was the otherwise staunch defender of evolution
Stephen Jay Gould. In his book Rock of Ages (1997) Gould
argued that science and religion are, as he put it, non-overlapping
magisteria. This claim has a long history, and can be traced back to
Medieval theology, which spoke of a ‘double truth’ as a
way to reconcile increasingly fragile dogma with new understandings
of the world not derived from scripture. Gould endorsed a notion long
preferred by religious apologists that science asks the ‘how’
questions while religion asks the ‘why’ questions, and
that neither magisteria has any reason to encroach on the territory
of the other. In this way, Gould insisted, there is no necessary
conflict between science and religion.

The compartments model is wrong, for many reasons. Firstly, it ignores the many specific
historical and factual truth claims religions make: Yahweh made a
covenant with His chosen people; Jesus rose from the dead; the Qur’an
is the inspired word of God as dictated by the Angel Gabriel to the
Prophet Muhammad. Claims of this magnitude clearly trespass against
the artificial barrier between ‘how’ and ‘why’
questions. And if Jesus rose from the dead or if the Archangel
Gabriel did actually dictate the Qur’an, then scientific
understandings of the physical universe are comprehensively flawed.
These claims are, in short, either true or false, and it is always a
mistake to allow their truth or falsity to be judged only by those
who have an interest in their preservation. If we are to take the
compartments thesis seriously, then only Christians could comment on
matters Christian and only scientists could comment on matters
scientific. Where this would lead the scientist who is also Christian
is left unclear. And in a complex controversy such as abortion, where
biological and ethical points are relevant, the compartmentalising
breaks down altogether. Issues like abortion, euthanasia, or stem
cell research that cross medical and moral boundaries render any cute
division of ‘why’ and ‘how absurd. As the
Australian philosopher John Passmore noted, ‘why’
questions can be answered in a ‘how’ format. (Passmore, p
8) But if the compartments model can be objected to from a secular
perspective, it is equally vulnerable to criticism from a religious
perspective, because the notion of compartmentalising things also
runs counter to scripture, which maintains that religious authority
runs across all merely human boundaries.

What the compartments thesis tends to do is to relinquish to religion a monopoly over all
the crucial moral and ethical questions; the ‘why’
questions. Now many people, religious and secular, would be worried
by this, both because secular moralists have many valuable things to
say, and because religious moralists cannot agree on what they are
saying, despite claiming to be speaking on God’s behalf. It is
also flawed in principle to set up intellectual no-go areas. In an
open society, nothing should be beyond the reach of critical
scrutiny. Clearly, then, the notion of religion and science sitting
in hermetically sealed compartments is neither credible nor healthy.

Science and
Religion: Working Together?

A much more hopeful approach to the question of the conflict between science and religion
is known as the complementarity model. This approach has
become quite influential, even fashionable, over the past decade.
This is not due entirely to the strengths of the complementarity
thesis, however. It has as much to do with the substantial sums of
money the John Templeton Foundation has available to fund research
which demonstrates complementarity between science and religion. John
Templeton is a devout Tennessee-born Presbyterian and the Foundation
he founded in 1987 boasts assets of 1.1 billion US dollars and had 60
million dollars available for grants to research conducive to its
vision in 2006 alone. Each year it offers the Templeton Prize of over
a million dollars to a scholar who is prepared to see no conflict
between religion and science. The Foundation has supported
Intelligent Design campaigns and is able to tempt scientists to its
events, so long as they jump through its hoops. The Templeton
Foundation is a tremendous boon to theistically-inclined scientists
or more straight-forwardly anti-science scholars who want to publish
in this area. So whatever power the complementarity thesis has is due
at least in part to the huge pool of American money bank-rolling it.

Complementarity has been defended mainly by religious apologists who work from the
premise of the spiritual authority of religion, by which they usually
mean their own religion. They are sometimes prepared to see a
conflict between science and other religions, though not with
their own. Complementarity thesis has several aspects to it. Some
have argued that science and religion have a common ancestor in
magic. Others have said that science was born out of religion. Still
others have argued that it is meaningless to oppose ‘science’
and ‘religion’ (complete with scare quotes) as if they
are discrete entities. On few occasions have they also noticed that
this argument is more destructive of the compartments thesis than of
the conflict thesis.

Most supporters of the
complementarity thesis hold relatively advanced views about their
religion. Among Christians, for example, most are willing to concede
that the Bible is not a source of literal truth from God about how
the universe works and what His plans for us are. They are content to
see the Bible not as literal scripture but as beautiful tales which
can illuminate one’s spiritual path; as allegories and myths
which can enlighten and stimulate. And as such, they can perform a
similar function to science in the sense of both being
truth-gathering mechanisms by which to understand the world.

An example of this
approach is the Catholic theologian John F. Haught who, in God
after Darwin (2000), made some dramatic concessions. In a massive
purge, Haught abandoned all conventional constructs of God as taught
in most churches and seminaries. He acknowledged that pre-Darwinian
conceptions of God are no longer credible, likening them to Sunday
School theism (Haught, ix) ‘A religiously adequate
understanding of God,’ Haught continued, ‘not only
tolerates but also requires the adventurous extension of cosmic
frontiers implied in evolutionary science.’ (Haught, x) Then,
in the manner of Teilhard de Chardin, he went on to refashion a
God-idea so far removed and above all evolutionary processes as to be
little more than an abstraction. Haught is not on his own. A great
deal of liberal religious thought is on a similar trajectory. Holmes
Rolston, to take one example, had probably not been near an
evangelical church in a while when he said, as part of an argument
for the compatibility of religion and science that neither of them
arrive at certainties. (Rolston, p 28) And John Brooke, in one of the
best arguments against a simplistic understanding of the conflict
thesis, nonetheless expressed his impatience with creationists and
‘militant secularists’ who ‘still like to dwell’
on old science versus religion antagonisms. (Brooke, 281-2) It is a
weakness of the compatibility thesis, then, that it requires people
to be more accommodating and willing to see scripture in allegorical
terms than is actually the case.

While the intentions of
the compatibilists is in many ways admirable, their claims are
seriously compromised by the weight of scripture which demands it be
taken as literal truth. ‘Whatever I am now commanding you, you
must keep and observe, adding nothing to it, taking nothing away.’
(Deuteronomy 12:32): ‘If a man abide not in me, he is cast
forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast
them into the fire, and they are burned.’ (John 15:6): ‘I,
Allah, am the Seer. These are the verses of the Book that makes
manifest. Surely We have revealed it – an Arabic Qur’an –
that you may understand.’ (Joseph 12:1-2, Qur’an)
It is true that scripture can be found to support other claims.
Desperate indeed is the cause that scripture does not support,
given the right interpretation. But these passages exist, and are
more specific than the passages used by compatibilists to support
their argument. The problem the religious liberals have always had
is; how to justify humanizing their scriptures when the scriptures
themselves give clear injunctions to do no such thing.
Fundamentalists, for all their narrowness of spirit and intellectual
poverty, are at least consistent with the spirit of their scriptures
in this respect. And, in all likelihood, their’s is the voice
of the future. Most attempts at religious syncretism have come and
gone. ‘Without any commonly understood philosophical
vocabulary, the traditional religions of humankind can now survive
only as fundamentalisms–which is what they have largely
become.’ (Cupitt, p 123) This can only mean greater levels of
conflict between science and religion in the future.

Science and
Religion: In Conflict?

We can now look at the
third of the major theories about the relationship between religion
and science: the conflict model. What it lacks in generous
American funding it makes up for in strength of argument. But before
outlining that argument, it is important to recognise the several
strands within the conflict thesis, which is considerably more
nuanced and aware of complexities than it is given credit for. Many
critics of the conflict thesis are content to pick holes in the
arguments of Draper and White and consider their job done. Others
produce lists of scientists of a Christian persuasion, assuming that
this proves there can be no conflict. All this is accompanied by
frequent resort to the word ‘reductionist’ in a very
disapproving way. As already noted, one of the better arguments
against the conflict thesis is that diverse phenomena like science
and religion get moulded into discrete entities that can oppose each
other. This is a very good point but it need not be detrimental to a
conflict thesis. It would mean that the idea of a conflict between
‘religion’ and ‘science’ would need to be
hedged with more shades of grey than sometimes has been the case.

With that in mind, when
‘religion’ is spoken of here, what is meant is
doctrinally-motivated monotheism. This would include conservative
Roman Catholicism and Islam as well as evangelical and fundamentalist
Protestantism. It is true that some notions influential in the Asian
traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism – reincarnation in
particular – are problematic from a scientific perspective. But
one can cast doubt on these teachings without facing the charge of
denigrating Scripture, insulting the Founder, or straying into
territory one has to right to enter. One could specifically and
loudly denounce reincarnation without the quality or sincerity of
one’s Hindu or Buddhist commitment coming into question. For
our purposes, that is the crucial difference between the Asian
traditions and the Western religions. So, for the purposes of this
essay, ‘religion’ means conservative Roman Catholicism
and Islam and evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism.

With this important
caveat in place, we can proceed to give an outline of the main
positions of contemporary conflict scholarship. Some are content to
clarify the basic differences in approach between science and
religion, without necessarily postulating that this inevitably means
the two shall conflict. Others are more willing to take that next
step. The core proposition to which they all return, however, is
that science and religion operate in different ways and value
different things. But this does not mean that they can be seen as
non-overlapping magisteria. The problem – and why there has
been conflict –

is that they do
overlap. Very often religion and science may well operate in
different intellectual zones, and sometimes they may work along
complementary trajectories. But it is inevitable that their paths
should cross every now and then, and equally inevitable that, on
occasions those crossings will be marred by misunderstanding, leading
on to conflict. Susan Haack, a leading philosopher of science, has
itemized the essential differences between science and religion as:

their conceptions
of the nature of the universe and our place in it;

their explanatory
accounts of how this came about;

what their beliefs
are and how they are held. (Haack, p 266)

Take a moment to
appreciate just how fundamental these differences are. Haack chose
not to elaborate on the consequences of differences as basic as
these, but it is clear that easy co-operation is not going to be
likely when two schemes of understanding diverge so fundamentally.
Neither is it surprising that there have been periodic clashes
between institutions largely made up of people with a religious
outlook and those whose approach is more scientific in nature.

It is not appreciated
as widely as it should be that the conflict model is notable for
taking religious truth-claims seriously. It actually shows religion
more respect to take its truth-claims at face value and then consider
their consequences. If religious truth claims are merely allegories,
as many supporters of the complementarity thesis argue, then it is
true that there is no real conflict. But if religions make claims,
drawn from supernaturalism or revelation, about the world, and to
which we are required to give assent, then there is room for conflict
with the scientific understanding of the world. And it is an
essential feature of religion that such claims should be made.
Certainly, Pope Alexander III was taking science seriously in 1163
when he forbade the study of physics or the laws of the world to all
clerics. So did the opponents of Galileo and Darwin, right down to
contemporary creationists and apologists for ‘intelligent
design’.

What Exactly is
‘Science’ and ‘Religion’?

We need at this stage
to specify what we mean by science, as we have done with religion.
Science, no less than religion, is difficult to define simply and
straightforwardly, and no definition stands unchallenged. However,
the American scientist E. O. Wilson defined science as ‘the
organised, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the
world and condenses the knowledge about the world into testable laws
and principles.’ (Consilience, p 57) What makes scientific
ideas especially useful is that they are produced without reference
to our social context. Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief
system, but is a combination of operations. The word science derives
from the Latin noun scientia, which in turn derives from the
verb scire, or ‘to know.’ Unlike religion, there
are no forbidden zones in science; all things, and all people are
open to question, and it is this inbuilt error-detection machinery
that makes science so valuable. Philosophy, at its best, works in the
same way.

The British embryologist Lewis Wolpert has outlined these five criteria for a subject to qualify as a science:

1. The phenomena it deals with should be capable of confirmation by independent observers;

2. ideas should be self-consistent;

3. Explanations should be able to be linked with other branches of science;

4. a small number of laws should be able to explain a wide variety of phenomena;

5. ideally, it should be quantitative and to be able to express its theories mathematically.(Wolpert, p. 124)

This is fundamentally different to the way religions operate. A
religion derives its authority from the power of testimony, that is,
one person’s assertion being accepted by another person, and so
on. That original assertion is often then backed up with a body of
writings which acquire the authority of being scripture. Faith then
becomes a significant means by which the core assertions are
accepted. And faith, remember, is ‘the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,’ (Hebrews 11:1)
Pope Leo XIII added to this when he declared faith to be ‘an
act of the intellect made under the sway of the will.’
(Lamentabili, 1907) Faith, understood in this way, cannot
operate in a scientific context.

Assertions made in a scientific context are open to criticism, and
can be altered or rejected if found to be flawed. Assertions made in
a religious context, however, if they acquire doctrinal status, also
acquire immunity from criticism. Having acquired this status, it
becomes problematic, even dangerous, to question or challenge its
presumptions. This is not how science works. No claim is beyond
question and no book, no matter how authoritative, is beyond
challenge.

If we turn our attention from the contrasting methods of science and religion to
their core presuppositions, we find another minefield of potential
conflict. The British physicist Simon Altmann speaks about certain
normative principles which have a ‘greater generality than
physical laws and which are so named because they organise scientific
discourse.’ Some theories can become entrenched, as he puts it,
in scientific practice because of the multilayered connections and
corroborations between it and supporting and neighbouring theories.
‘It is only by knitting a tight mesh of interrelated and
entrenched concepts that entrenchment as a process requires
legitimacy.’ (Altmann, p 158) These mutually supporting
theories, what are called laws of nature, are the positive outcomes
of certain normative principles, which describe the way nature works.
Altmann considers lists five main normative principles:

principle of
uniformity or regularity in nature;

principle of
causation;

principle of
sufficient reason (no effect without a cause);

principle of
symmetry (no asymmetry as an effect unless it is in the cause);

principle of
natural evolution.

Each of these normative principles gives rise to a host of deeply entrenched and mutually
supporting physical laws. The overall effect is, in Altmann’s
words, a mesh of interwoven principles, laws and properties which, as
a whole, constitute our scientific understanding of the world. And,
as Altmann makes clear, the general direction of this mesh of
interweaving and mutually reinforcing knowledge is that the idea of a
God is, not so much in conflict with it, as irrelevant to it. As
Laplace famously remarked to Napoleon regarding God, “Sir, I
have no need for that hypothesis.”

But nothing is so fatal
to the idea of God than being irrelevant, and that condition has
given rise to the periodic outbursts of open conflict that we have
seen over the centuries, from Galileo to Intelligent Design. Each of
these periods of conflict arose because certain defenders of
religious doctrine at the time have perceived their doctrine to be
under threat by the new scientific understanding of how things work.
And it is important to note that in each case they have been right;
their doctrine has been under direct and serious challenge by
the new scientific understanding.

Judaism, Christianity
and Islam all claim that nature can be explained
teleologically and that nature is not intelligible solely in
naturalistic, scientific terms. It is inevitable that, at various
times, these fundamental differences will manifest themselves in the
form of open conflict. The Galileo saga, and the long struggle among
conservative Christians to accommodate Darwinism cannot be understood
unless one thinks in terms of conflict. The Catholic and humanist
attitudes to abortion, homosexuality, celibacy and stem cell research
also have their bedrock in the different ways science and religion
look at the world and at our place in it.

It is apparent, then,
that at this abstract theoretical level, science and religion are
rival outlooks on the world with competing core propositions,
divergent mechanisms of understanding and contrasting lines of
authority. At this point it would be worthwhile to look briefly at
the quintessential religious sources: the scriptures. What do they
say? As is well known, the Hebrew Bible (what gets called the ‘Old
Testament’) is a pre-scientific set of documents. It was taken
for granted that the sun and all the firmament of heaven revolved
around the only thing of any importance: the earth. The universe was
tiny by modern standards and God could intervene it its operations at
will, as when He stopped the sun in its tracks so as to allow Joshua
more time to complete his massacre of the Amorites (Joshua 10:
10-12). This same passage, which assumes the earth is fixed and
non-rotating, was used against Galileo, to prove the heretical nature
of his assertions. These, and many other passages, all demonstrate an
understanding of the workings of nature and the wider universe
entirely at odds with what is now known. The gap between that
pre-scientific understanding and what is now known is the gap that
has given rise to the conflict between science and religion.

Both Testaments of the
Bible carry several warnings about the risks posed by ‘worldly
knowledge’, of which science is an obvious example. We are
exhorted to lean not on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) and to
keep away from what is falsely called knowledge (I Timothy 6:20).
God, we are told has shown us the folly of earthly wisdom (I
Corinthians 1:20) These are not random passages taken out of context,
but are central planks of the Christian message: that we are
incapable of working things out for ourselves, and that attempting to
do so is unnecessary anyway, given the imminent arrival of the
Judgment Day.

Muslim apologists are
proud of what they claim are pro-science passages in the Qur’an,
as well as prophecies of scientific advances and natural laws. But,
as with most prophecies, the language is sufficiently florid to
permit several interpretations. But even if we grant that the Qur’an
says these things, it has done little to develop a scientific mindset
through Muslim culture. This asymmetry was best illustrated in 1993
when Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, the supreme cleric of Saudi Arabia,
declared that the world is flat and that anyone disagreeing with this
proposition is therefore denying the Qur’an and should be
punished.

It would be difficult
to find a clearer example of the conflict between religion and
science. What the cleric says is entirely refuted by science, but he
claims a religious scripture written a millennium and a half ago as
the more reliable authority. Even worse, he then threatens coercion
against those who would challenge his view. Science does not operate
in this way.

At this point many
people will become impatient and insist that such thinking reflects
outmoded ideas about what the Bible or the Qur’an meant and how
it should be understood. These objections do not help. Religious
liberals may insist, sometimes with good scholarship to back them up,
that the Bible ‘didn’t mean’ this or ‘really
meant’ that, but, as with our Saudi example, it has done little
to alter public perception.

Here is where the
notion of demotheology is useful. Demotheology is a term which
denotes the theology not of the erudite scholars and elites, but of
the average believer. Demotheology may be incoherent, intolerant and
simply banal, but it is the working theology of the general
churchgoer, and exerts a much more widespread influence than the
nuanced erudition of privileged theologians.

When we consider the
demotheology of science and religion, it is clear there is a
conflict. General perceptions within average Christian churchgoers is
that there was a real conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic
Church, just as there still is between the supporters of evolution by
natural selection and creationists, and in the stem cell debate. The
ongoing influence of demotheology also helps explain why the pallid
abstractions of John Haught or Holmes Rolston, for all their
intellectual sincerity, will never resonate with the general
believer.

For the non-academic
Bible reader, the words are taken at face value, with little or no
allowance made for the textual subtleties and confusions. And read in
this way, their religion makes a series of truth-claims about the
world that are in direct competition with scientific understandings.
For those who choose to take the fundamentalist or conservative
approach to interpreting scripture, conflict is the inevitable
result. So we can see that the conflict thesis is sound, both
theoretically – whether from a scientific or a religious
perspective – and sociologically, from the perspective of
public perceptions.

What the ‘Conflict’
between Science and Religion is Really About

Finally, it is worth
spending a little time in outlining what is meant by ‘conflict’.
We tend to think of the more dramatic crises, such as the Galileo
affair or the ongoing hostility to Darwinism. But in most cases, when
we speak of a conflict between science and religion, what is actually
meant is a dissonance, a philosophical incompatibility between their
core insights. Many people will carry on with their lives entirely
unaware of the existence of this incompatibility. The core insight of
science, from a human point of view, is that human beings are not the
centre of the universe. Rather, we are one species on one planet, in
one solar system, in one galaxy, in–for all we know–one
universe among others. However significant we may be to the running
and well-being of Planet Earth, we are irrelevant to the cosmos. By
progressively revealing our true place in the universe, science has
helped us realise the dangers of our anthropocentric conceit. We are
still coming to terms with the psychological consequences of this
drastic shift in perceptions.

Religion, by stark
contrast, tells us that the creator of the entire universe is deeply
interested in our welfare; everything from our health and well-being
to whether we can find a car park. Men are made in the image of God
Himself, so we are told. And take care to note that it is only men
who enjoy this privilege. Men are second only to God in a
hierarchical Great Chain of Being, all focused on our needs and
wishes. And after our death, we are of such importance that there is
a place set aside for our immortal soul to rattle around forever.
William James understood this motivation when he said this of
religion:

The pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it,
revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal
destiny. Religion, in short is a monumental chapter of human egotism.
(James, p 491)

In formal language the
division is between a natural reading of the universe and a
supernatural reading of it. Like it or not, these two readings are
not compatible. So what gets called the conflict between science and
religion boils down to an ethical dilemma for each of us; a dilemma
that is going to have momentous consequences for the twenty-first
century. That dilemma revolves around the incompatibility between the
natural understanding of the universe, with its consequences of
cosmic humility, versus the anthropocentric conceit that
supernaturalistic religion permits us. Once again, it is important to
recognise what is not being said. It is not that all
secularists are right and all religious people are wrong. There are
good people in all walks of life and from all persuasions. The claim
is that monotheistic religion, because of its supernaturalistic
presumptions and conceits, offers little help to anyone wanting to
live in a sustainable way. And what is more worrying, some of its
tenets provide support for those who want to avoid taking
responsibility for living in a more sustainable way. Far from being
some remote academic squabble, the conflict between science and
religion is the most significant issue of the twenty-first century.
It is hoped that the essays in this book will stimulate readers to
think clearly about their priorities and rearrange their lives
accordingly. The fate of the planet rests on the decision each of us
makes.

Bill Cooke is
Senior Lecturer at the School of Visual Arts, University of Auckland
at Manukau (New Zealand); Asia-Pacific Coordinator, Center of
Inquiry; a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of
Religion; and author of the Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism, and
Humanism, Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2006